I wrote about this a while back: Growing up Basecamp that may be of interest to other project managers here.

As you work with the software, it gathers a body of knowledge about the difference between your estimates of how long things will take and how much time they actually end up taking. You can quickly see the average percentage error you make in your estimates, and furthermore, Devshop shows you the *corrected* estimates by default when you’re looking at your timeframe, taking into account your average error.

(So if your taks take on average 30% longer than your estimates, and you schedule a task that you think will take 10 days, Devshop will count that as a 13-day task when it’s showing you how much time you have for other stuff.)

That’s the gist of it, anyway…I may be a bit fuzzy on the specifics.

Anyway: I was very impressed.

What I really liked about Devshop is that they have taken a small part of project management (which is very broad), focused on that and implemented it really well. My criticism couldnt’ be something like ‘it doesn’t have source code control like Trac does’ because Devshop made it clear as to what purpose they solve.

Other startups could learn from this - don’t try and be everything because it will only open up your faults, instead do one thing well and then expand out to other areas if you wish. API’s and web services are well established and you only need to do one part of the solution, give you users the option to integrate with other services for the rest.

And Devshop didn’t have a press release, my post is the result of evaluating the app, the information on the website and talking to the founder. Thanks for the compliments but I am not considering a job in PR. One of the reasons for the langauge might be because I spent my break from blogging writing marketing and sales materials for Omnidrive, time to switch seats again

Keep up the blogging effort and I’m sure you’ll avoid being mean

Blogging makes you mean. I’m trying to avoid that fate.

What you say is very true. In the future we should all keep that in mind. But it does help to have more of a balanced view from the get go.

Here is a good example:

[quote Mike C]
Where is the constructive criticism? Are there no shortcomings of this software? I find this hard to believe. I hope TechCrunch doesn’t loose it’s credibility kowtowing to their mates and advertisers.[/quote]

Mike, you’re probably a smart guy. Why would you say something like this? What proof could you possibly have? Next time, instead of making an accusation, why dont you post something like this:

“Nik, what shortcomings did you see in Devshop?”.

My guess is that Nik would likely respond.

It is true that commenters are often times quick to judge, and it seems that some people will always complain no matter what you do. But read through this post, much of it does seem as if it was taken directly from a press release by the company.

Maybe it is simply the recent string of glowing reviews that can’t seem to find any flaws in a service, in combination with reviews of trvial little “apps” (i4giveu) that make Tech Crunch seem watered down. Granted, you are the one who defines what the site will be. I used to come here for objective reviews about new products and web companies. Maybe that’s not the point. I could be wrong.

And yesterday’s post on teamslide: its a cool product that is very inexpensive and strips out a lot of the hassles of webex. I do think that it can hurt webex and its competitors. There are a lot of companies that won’t pay webex fees but still want to give presentations over the internet. Teamslide is a great application for that, and is definitely in the webex space.

Comments are a really important part of this blog - the feedback is great. But before you make yet another accusation of nepotism or outright fraud, think about how those accusations tend to pile up and up and up, and the effect it has on bloggers: paralysis, fear of saying anything because of how ugly people can be when hiding behind a computer screen.

“no digg”.

I have to agree. Where is the constructive criticism? Are there no shortcomings of this software? I find this hard to believe. I hope TechCrunch doesn’t loose it’s credibility kowtowing to their mates and advertisers.